Monday morning after only a couple hours of sleep thanks to a late night at Yankee Stadium, I boarded a plane from LaGuardia Airport to Palm Beach to visit my parents. It was just another too early Monday morning flight, I settled into my seat and soon fell asleep. Somewhere over North Florida I woke up, found out we’d be able to see the Space Shuttle Endeavor, I moved over to the window seat and with my iPhone (airplane mode on) in my hand, took a few pictures that over the next 48+ hours, would make their way around the world.

After landing and while waiting for my suitcase at baggage claim I checked into the airport on Foursquare and then I tweeted “Three things about my flight: I can lay down across 3 seats just fine, it was freezing & I got to see this.” I included the following photo:

Space Shuttle Endeavor from Delta flight 2285

Next thing I knew I had to turn off my Echofon mentions on my phone because my phone wouldn’t stop vibrating. Turns out the picture above and the photo below had gone viral!

What has happened over the last few days has been, for lack of better words, crazy and overwhelming. My picture has been tweeted by @BreakingNews, @NASA, @WeatherChannel and @JimCantore (of the weather channel), just to mention a few and now my 2 tweeted photos have been viewed almost 800,000 times!

And possibly the coolest thing…Brian Williams from NBC blogged about me!!

I know there are other blog posts and articles about the photos and me, but I can’t list them all. I suggest you just Google my name if you really care that much. A cousin of mine posted on my Facebook page that she had and suggested I do the same. All I did was type in “Stefanie” and my last name was the first name to pop up! I was above Stefanie Powers (I spell my name with an F because of her, my Dad liked the spelling).

I’m not going to go into anymore details because, well…you’ve probably already read them in any of the above pieces or saw the interviews on TV or read my tweets.

If you didn’t know all of this, you must have been living under a rock!

Suddenly my Twitter following has gone from just about 1,800 on Monday morning to over 5,400 as I type this on Wednesday night. I had intended to write this blog post Tuesday morning but because of interviews all day Monday and Tuesday and then spending the day with my mom for her birthday today, I find myself finally getting around to finishing my side of the story.

This whole viral situation has completely caught me off guard. I never thought anything of the magnitude my photo would have when I sent an innocent tweet moments after I landed in West Palm Beach. I am still in shock about it all. Will this lead to bigger and better things? Well as someone who is currently seeking full time employment….I hope so. As a matter of fact my Twitter friend @Metsgrrl suggested I tweet that I’m looking for a new job and to post my Linkedin profile. So that’s exactly what I did!

So far nothing solid has come though, but there are a few possibilities out there.

If you have found my blog because you clicked on a link in an article about me, or on my twitter page, HI! Thanks for reading. I tweet mainly about sports, and only once in a while about Space Shuttle launches. I take pictures of everything from Yankees games, to crazy clothes I see in stores, to random amazing things I see while walking around cities such as Manhattan. Photography is a hobby. I blog mainly about my experiences in life, sporting events I attend, or sports in general. I don’t blog just to blog. I blog because I have something to say and I think one or two people might want to read about it.

Monday morning I boarded a plane for a week of relaxing, sending out resumes and most importantly, to celebrate my mom’s birthday in Florida. Monday afternoon I became an instant “15 minute celebrity” for a few pictures I took with my phone.

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About Not Your Typical Girl

Just a girl, who has typical and not so typical girl thoughts. I'll be using this space to talk about anything and everything. Maybe I'll even talk about you. Names *might* be changed to protect the innocent and the not so innocent....you decide..

I am so proud of you for capturing the amazing image and the attention you are getting from this. Being an avid Yankee fan (former NY’er now trapped in Fla) I am also following you on Twitter too. I love watching this picture attention snowball for you. Congrats!!!
Oh…I am also committing the sin of envy!

Now that you have been Fresh Pressed, you will get even more followers! Congrats on all of it (unless I should be sending sympathies… it is probably a bit overwhelming!). In any case, great photos! You were definitely in the right place at the right time!
~Chrystal

Hey Stefanie
Awesome pics and story. Good Luck with finding a job, should be easy now. I see your a Yankee fan, you should check out mine and my friends blog/podcasts on our site simplysports-talk.com. We live in NY and always have good sports stories up on our site.
Thanks and Good Luck,
Brendan Kelly
@simplysportstlk

Great pictures, talk about the right place at the right time!! Just shows that looking out the window isn’t always just clouds!! Hope this fame helps with the job hunt, good luck and thanks for posting the pictures.

I wonder if your plane flew passing into Space Shuttle launch dangerous zone. It seemed that if anything were went wrong the Endeavour could have went your way. However your picture really great. Warm regard from Indonesia.

wow, what an incredible experience! love the power of social media. good luck with a job. even if one doesn’t come from this, you still have the coolest experience ever to talk about for ages!
alyson — http://www.theaveragegirlsguide.com (I live near WPB, saw your pic in our PB Post!)

Wow, what a story! I was one of those people living under a rock and had no idea until I decided to click on your blog based on the post title and it appearing on the front page of wordpress. I was intrigued. What an exciting time for you! Great photos, and good thinking to take them!, and best of luck to you on the job search!

Wow. You’re shot was even luckier than you think! That flight was the second-to-last EVER space shuttle flight! After the Atlantis goes up in July they will glide into the hangars of history and be launched no more. Very sad. I was in Fla in March and I saw the Endeavor on the pad, exactly one month before you took your shot. I’m sorry, I just can’t fathom how unbelievably AWESOME this is! I am in tears of awesome!

that is so wild! and exciting. viral power is crazy and i think its fun that you got caught up in it for a few days! that’s way more than 15 seconds of fame 🙂
those are some awesome shots, too.
for the job (just some honesty from a stranger here) i’d recommend making your post a little less “wanna hire me????” and more “i’m a sports business-something-or-other and am currently looking for a job” – try to fit in as much as possible in those god damn 140 characters. 🙂 just trying to help! good luck! P.S. LinkedIn works really well too.

Congrats on going viral…and on being Freshly Pressed! I appreciate your comments about blogging: blog because you have something to say, and if the world reads it, so be it. Good luck on the job search!

Haha, that is so awesome! I have to agree that you were definitely in the right place at the right time. Put aside how awesome it is that you’ve been interviewed that many times, but it is even more awesome that you got to see something like that! You are one in a few!

These photos are amazing, and you wholly deserve the attention! I recently experienced a little web fame of my own thanks to the launch. My blog hits went from 5 a day to 3000 in a matter of hours. 🙂 Not as exciting as being interviewed by every news agency in the US, but still pretty neat! -Best Wishes Jamie

you’re very very lucky to stumple upon this unique space shuttle trip, but first of all you were very ready and smart to understand what it was and to take a pic about it. So good luck for your future!!

Wow … What an exciting few days, and now you can add Freshly Pressed to your list of accomplishments. Must have been a whirlwind. They are great photos though, and I cannot wait to show them to my 6-yr old son who is fascinated by spaceships and astronauts.
Very cool. Congrats!

I guess I live under a rock. I’ve not read or watched any of those interviews – but then I rarely watch TV and even more rarely those programs/stations you’ve noted.

I saw your photo online through a political website – it was clear that the photo had gone “viral”. Amazing photos to be sure.

Pretty cool though. One of those, ‘right time, right place’ kind of things. Cool beans for you. And, if you can leverage that 15 minutes into something positive and productive, so much more so the better.

What a fun story! Glad I found it on “Freshly Pressed”. Good for you…and good luck in the job search. (As for me…I was visiting Florida from TX, and as the shuttle launched I was UNDER that blanket of clouds seen in your photo…driving from Tampa to Ft. Myers to catch MY plane…and couldn’t see a darn thing b/c of the clouds!)

Oh wow so it was yours! I was wondering who was the lucky person who took a video/snapped photos of this. I was on the ground in Florida, watching the shuttle live, and was wondering at the moment if there was anyone in the an airplane who could see it, and boy I really wanted to get that perspective. A day or two later, I found a video of it on the Telegraph newspaper! Congratulations! Thank you for the wonderful, mind-blowing perspective! It is by far the most amazing thing I have ever seen!

Absolutely awesome photos, well done you. I have just spent ages reading your previous post and the discussion that followed – keep up the good work! Really great blog and congrats on being freshly pressed!

Talk about being at the right place at the right time–with a camera in hand no less. What serendipity there is in life! Keep having fun, congrats on being FPed as part of this step into fame, and good luck with the job search.

Congratulations on your photo opportunity-of-a-lifetime and the well-deserved press you’ve gotten as a result! I saw the image come through my Twitter feed and posted about it on my FB as well. Lucky you were on that side of the plane!!

wow, this is the first I have heard of this. I was in at the Kennedy Space center for the launch but this is def a cool new perspective on the shuttle! I cant believe the program only has one more lunch and then the shuttle program is gone forever 😦 anyway, I am writing a book, check out my blog if you get a chance 🙂

Those pictures are pretty amazing, so I can see how they went viral…I can only imagine the shock when you realized what was happening! Hopefully it works out in your favor for finding a job! Congrats and good luck!

Well I have been living under a rock! This is the first time I’ve seen those photographs, and can certainly understand why they’ve made you an instant hit! They are astonishing!

I watched a space shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral in the summer of 1984, from a very long distance of course. The shuttle was just barely visible–I had to use binoculars to see it well. But the roar and the vibration under my feet I will never forget!

Obviously you got a much better view–congratulations, and thank you for sharing those with us!

You were correct to be bemused. Similar shots have been taken throughout the years of the space-transportation-system, aka shuttle, and of other launch vehicles. Any illustrated book about the space program is likely to include one. But despite this fact, it is still uncommon enough for an ordinary passenger jet (rather than a supervising NASA jet) to be at the appropriate flight level and map location, and in the appropriate time slot (and before the vapour trail clears), to enable a live view of a spacecraft on its way out there. Congratulations on being one of the few lucky ones to see this great sight in reality. Well done for taking the picture. And thank-you for letting us less-lucky people see it.

carpe diem…I would say you are poised for opportunity and in a position to seize it. Thank you for these amazing pictures! And, Congratulations on your lucky week! btw I wonder what your horoscope reads.

Hi there…I work at CBS News in NY…we saw your photos right after you posted. In a word: spectacular! I once saw the launch from I-75…and it was majestic…but your pix are beyond that. Way to go Stefanie! 🙂

WOW these photos are absolutely amazing, I saw these photographs via facebook and only stumbled across this blog post because you “very rightly so” achieved FP on wordpress, well done you for everything, its a great achievement that you can tell to your children, grandchildren etc ect never forget 🙂

We were down by Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, so we only got a brief view before it went into the cloud deck. I think that same cloud deck the Space Shuttle is punching through is what makes your photographs so beautiful.

Really cool 🙂 I envy you being able to see something so powerful and symbolic like that. I live in Ireland so we never see any shuttle launches pass over as such, something did last year though, I remember seeing it and it was all over the news, some rocket or something launched from the US with a satelite onboard, either way it wasn’t half as awe inspiring or up close as this!

I think you’ve just inspired me to make an attempt at photography again 🙂

I’m afraid to say this, but I have been living under a rock I think. A big rock. So sorry 😦 But I congratulate you on being Freshly Pressed, being famous in less than a day too. That’s wonderful. Must have been a long week for you. Good luck on job search. Now, on that topic, I can definitely join you.. we are on the same boat. Maybe that’s why I have been living under a rock. I need to get to the top of the rock then. 🙂

Hey, good for you! I’m glad you’re having your 15 minutes. Isn’t life strange sometimes the way it can take some unexpected turns from the smallest things? And? Even though I’m an avid (ok, crazy) Red Sox fan, I can appreciate that you stayed up late to hang in there with your Yankees. 🙂

I have no problems w/ Red Sox fans, or any other teams fans as long as they respect the game and the players on the other teams. I am a baseball fan before I’m a Yankees fan….an avid and rabid Yankees fan. Thanks for reason! 🙂

Oh wow. From the thumnail I thought you taking pictures of a cracked window. The right place at the right time…

Too late now, but you could have cleaned these up and probably sold them for a lot of money. …oh wait …Brian Williams!!! Ha.
Congratulations – you just got the shot that would make most fifteen thousand dollar camera carrying pro photographers jealous. Great work.

Awesome. To most people getting freshly pressed is a big thing, but after all the other stuff you got it probably doesn’t even make icing on the cake, just a mere decoration. Way to take advantage of being in the right place at the right time, congrats.

My sincere congratulations… but from pro photographer’s point of view I think you should have sold that photo instead of giving it away to all those big guys… not only you would have earned money but also would have helped pro photographer’s industry… too many photos are floating around for free these days… if you did sell it, then congrats again! 🙂

Well done on not-a-typical blog, ur original, which is refreshing. I share ur passion for photography, especially taking out of the ordinary pictures (tho nothing as of yet as extra-ordinary as your latest offering). Check out my blog if u want, my attempt at writing 😉
XOXO

How cool is your story!? I’ve always wondered about those people who capture videos and pictures of newsworthy things and how they react to sudden “stardom!” Work it out girl! Start demanding bottled water fresh from mountain streams, name the designer you’re wearing during each interview, tell CNN you want straws in Diet Coke upon arival to the set, and require that American Woman play as you enter each interview. Hey, that’s what I would do. 15 minutes will come and go so have fun with it! Haha!

Amazing you were in the perfect place and at the perfect time. You also had no one sitting next to because you were able to lay down over 3 seats. Your shots are spectacular. Funny how non-monumental you thought your photos were at the time you shuttered them, huh. Most excellent post here. Happy Saturday evening to you. 🙂

Even though it was just a matter of being there at the right moment and right time, i still commend you on your instinct to get a camera (digital camera or phone) and take the picture. Congratulations!

Haha, that is so awesome! I have to agree that you were definitely in the right place at the right time. Put aside how awesome it is that you’ve been interviewed that many times, but it is even more awesome that you got to see something like that! You are one in a few!
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